


Grief is a Lantern

by Pigeonsplotinsecrecy



Series: Filling Out the Episodes [1]
Category: 9-1-1: Lone Star (TV 2020)
Genre: 2x02 tag, Ensemble - Freeform, Grief, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-02
Updated: 2021-02-02
Packaged: 2021-03-13 00:01:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29144133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pigeonsplotinsecrecy/pseuds/Pigeonsplotinsecrecy
Summary: The 126 must deal with the grief of Tim dying.
Series: Filling Out the Episodes [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2139738
Comments: 9
Kudos: 19





	Grief is a Lantern

## Glimmers in the Night

Debris hangs in the air in Austin, and the volcanic matter looks like snowflakes, falling through the apocalyptic sky. It’s beautiful and heartbreaking all at once. With tragedy, there always seems to be corresponding beauty that feels like a cruel taunt more than a way of balancing the awfulness. T.K. wants to be somewhere else because it hurts to exist in his own brain. His body is heavy with the weight of what he has seen— the melting flesh, the smell of burning skin, and the horror of losing someone so close. The thought of snow creates a pang of yearning for New York and her white winters. New York isn’t his home any longer, but it’s his history, and whenever grief creeps into his life, T.K. can’t help but grieve the simpler times in New York before everything became so hard. He longs for real snow, not the bastardized disaster-snow that has fallen upon Austin. He wants to be six years old again, making snow angels in the park before the snow turned to ash and before the pollution started to clog his mind. His brain remains congested no matter how far he runs from the chaos that dawns the minute innocence and ignorance are lost. With all that hangs in the sky, T.K. can’t see the stars, so the night feels lonelier.

Within every great natural disaster, there are the little disasters that go unknown to the wider universe— the human tragedies that are just blips compared to the broader chaos that mother nature has inflicted. Faces become blurred as casualty numbers scroll across news banners and names are shoved behind the fear-inducing title of whatever “once in a lifetime” event has just happened. Losses are sensationalized, and rubberneckers wear you down with their stares. It is hard to have a tragedy so personal be the world’s because the grief becomes even more inescapable. It’s there when you flip on the TV; it’s there when a friend from long ago calls to see if you’re okay; it’s there when you go to the grocery store to get midnight salty snacks and the cashier cannot stop talking about it, even as you are moments away from breaking down and crying. The grief comes at you from all angles. You feel so many feelings that you aren’t sure which are yours. Your pain feels exposed, and you don’t know how to tuck it back inside of you, back into its cage until you’re ready to face it.

T.K. isn’t ready to face what happened. It’s only been a few hours, and he is still running on adrenaline and whatever chemicals are lingering in his body to keep him going. He’s not let himself think too much because he knows that the emotional crash that he’s going to face isn’t one that he can handle alone. T.K. knows enough about himself that he knows that he doesn’t handle feelings well. He’s been working on coping skills in therapy, but in times like these, when unexpected things happen, his brain always wants to revert to old patterns, the ones that are a quick fix for so problems that have not so quick solutions. He knows that he needs to be careful with himself for a while, and he’s not going to take shortcuts to feel better.

The highs and the lows of life get to T.K. the most. He loves the high and is debilitated by the lows, and too often, he seeks the gray middle. The levelness that allows him to robotically function. One moment he was celebrating his dad’s life and not too many later, someone’s life had been taken, and it’s like every time things start to be good, something sours the sweetness. In times like these, T.K. defaults to feeling numbness, and he knows that when the numbness hits, he’ll want to feel something— anything— because anything’s better than trying to process emotions he cannot access. Numbness helps him cope, but it also deprives him of the light. The joy becomes enshrouded by the darkness that prevents him from engaging with himself. 

Going home doesn’t feel right after everything that has happened, and T.K. knows he can’t sleep in his own bed tonight. Unable to think too hard, he follows his gut and goes to be with the person he most wants to hold. Carlos had told him to come over if he needed to, and T.K. doesn’t care if he was just saying that to be nice. He needs to see Carlos. To know that he’s still there, to feel his skin, and to prove that this horrible night is real. Until he sees Carlos, he’ll worry, so he drives the eight miles to Carlos. It’s late, so there’s little traffic, and T.K. thanks whatever’s up there for little blessings because he doesn’t have the patience to sit and wait for other people to get moving when his life already feels like it has hit a standstill.

He feels unsettled in a way that makes his head light with the desire to escape the truth because he doesn’t want to accept what has happened. It would be easier to deny the facts just a little longer. To let himself sleep one last sleep without the burden of tragedy. Tomorrow, he’ll wake up with a piece of lead in his brain, pressing his head against the pillow with an unwillingness to get up and face everything that has happened, but today, he’s unfocused and his world is a haze with a gray filter. He can see the pixels in the air as his eyes try to find any stray beam of light. He grips the key in hand, pressing the cool ridges into the palm of his hand and letting the feel of the cut metal remind him that he’s not floating in outer space alone. He’s here, on earth, seconds away from seeing the man he loves. He’ll be okay if he can just push his body a little further.

The adrenaline is starting to crash, and his energy is waning, but he has to go just a little further. It is that distance, the small but profound one, that keeps his legs holding him up. A few steps more and he will be by Carlos’ side. T.K. drags his feet to the door of Carlos’ house. He slips into the apartment, being as quiet as he can because it’s late and Carlos is probably asleep. He doesn’t mind if Carlos isn’t awake, and it might be easier for him to be asleep. T.K.’s tempted to turn back and isolate himself. He thinks it might be less painful if he doesn’t have to meet Carlos’ eyes, but he shakes that thought away. Knowing that Carlos is there and safe is what matters. T.K. doesn’t need to talk or anything like that. He just needs to see that Carlos is there because loneliness magnifies pain.

As much as he doesn’t _need_ Carlos’ consoling, relief strikes him when he sees that Carlos is waiting on the stairs. Carlos’ face nearly makes T.K. lose it, those brown eyes that say all the things T.K. has tried to ignore. Even with the sadness between them, Carlos is still so inviting. He feels like safety. T.K. takes a breath, exhaling the air that’s been lodged in his chest. He uses whatever remaining energy he has to make it to the stairs, and he can’t take them with much gusto, but pulls his feet up, and he goes to where Carlos is waiting. He feels his heart flutter at the thought that Carlos had not gone to sleep. On a day when sleep is so tempting an escape, it means so much to wait up and choose to endure the slow-motion hours when you can fast forward through the longest minutes, the time when there’s nothing left you can do.

Carlos reaches out to T.K. to take his hand, and guide them to bed, but T.K. can’t do it. He can’t lift his arm. He can’t reach out. He can’t move his legs any more than he already has. It’s all too much, and all he can do is drop his body against Carlos’. He collapses against his boyfriend— oh, how he loves that word _—_ and he lets his airy head find the solidness of Carlos’ arm.

T.K. can’t move his head from Carlos’ shoulder as he starts to feel a hot bubbling in his stomach. Tim didn’t deserve to die. It’s unfair and aggravating. 2100 degrees of anger makes its way through T.K.’s body, and he wants to scream as he clutches onto Carlos to keep him grounded, but the truth is that as hot as the anger is, it freezes as soon as it hits his chest. So, he sobs because he’s so sad. He thinks he’s sad, at least. Feelings are confusing. They shift quickly and blend. They camouflage as one another, and T.K. doesn’t have the energy to know how he feels other than “not okay.”

The day wasn’t supposed to go like this. T.K. should still be at work, attending to calls from people doing things that they should have known better than to do. No one had predicted the disaster that had unfolded. Even when they knew they were dealing with something so dangerous, T.K. had focused on saving people. It hadn’t occurred to him that they would fail to save one of their own.

T.K. can’t find words, so he doesn’t try. He lets Carlos hold him, and he sits on the stares feeling no comfort but feeling as at peace as he possibly could. The tears fall from T.K.’s eyes as Carlos presses kisses against T.K.’s head and pulls T.K. closer with a firm arm; they are quiet tears, the ones that give none of the release of a sob. There are only a few of them, but they are more than T.K. usually lets another person see. They stream down his face, warm and salty. They make his face itchy, but the knotted ball of energy in his chest remains strong. As the tears slow, T.K. hides his face in the wet splotch he’s left on Carlos’ shirt. Carlos rubs his back, and T.K. wonders what he did to deserve a man like this, one who will sit on the stairs as a sad soundtrack plays mournfully in T.K.’s mind.

T.K. doesn’t know how long they sit there, but eventually, Carlos shares the first words between them, “Do you want to talk about it?”

Without having to think about it, T.K. shakes his head. “I just want to sleep.” So, they sleep, letting the awful day become part of the past. It’s a step forward, but it doesn’t feel much like one.

When T.K. wakes up a little after four, Carlos is just waking up. His eyes are bleary and his head is heavy. He doesn’t want to move. Even the act of moving his lips feels like too much, but he musters the strength to speak. “You’re still here,” T.K. says to himself more than Carlos. He rolls over to the other side of the bed, turning so he can pull his arms around Carlos, “I thought I would miss you.” T.K. brushes his hands over Carlos’ face to make sure he’s real and this isn’t just a mirage. “But you’re still here.”

“I’m here,” Carlos confirms. Carlos takes the hand on his face and wraps it in his own. T.K. stretches his neck to kiss Carlos. “I’ve got work.”

“You were just at work,” T.K. says with a sigh. He doesn’t want Carlos to leave just yet, but he also isn’t going to ask Carlos to stay because he knows that if he did, Carlos would.

“I know, but they need me there. I won’t be too long.” Carlos looks T.K. over. “You’ll be okay?” He’ll be okay. He’s been through enough trauma in his life that he knows he can handle this one. He knows how to stay away from the edge and keep his head screwed on. Therapy hasn’t been a useless pursuit as much as he would like to say that he didn’t need it.

“Yeah, I’ll be fine.” T.K. puts on a brave face. “Meet up after your shift?”

Carlos nods, giving T.K. another kiss. “But for now, go back to sleep. I’ll be back before you know it.”

“I need it,” T.K. replies, but he knows that he won’t go back to sleep. T.K. doesn’t want to sound clingy. He doesn’t want those old fears of someone he loves leaving and then not coming back to come back full force, but he can’t help the panic he feels as he watches Carlos get ready for work. He knows Carlos is good at his job, and he knows how to take as few chances as he can, but dangers always lurk for first responders, and the light starting to fill the sky reminds T.K. that the night is never far away.

## The Trap of the Rising Sun

Owen is the leader of the 126, so he knows that he has to keep a strong front whenever possible. People look at him to know what to do. When bad circumstances start to fragment a team, it’s always a good idea for someone to act like they’ve got it all under control— to use an authoritative voice and assure them that somehow they can survive the storm that has hit them. Owen wants to be that person for his team, but the truth is that he doesn’t have it under control. His head is spinning with memories of the past, and that never does any good. He’s being pulled back to the darkest time of his life. Loss of life is never easy, but losing someone that you know well and that you should be looking out for is even more heartbreaking. Owen doesn’t want to let his mind linger too long on what has happened because it won’t do him much good. He’s got to push forward. For better or for worse, he’s always been the type of man to push through tragedy, and he’s not going to stop now.

Owen hasn’t slept much; he’s sure that none of them really have, but he’s up bright and early because with so much on his mind, sleep seems like a waste of time. He hopes the morning will give him some sense of clarity, some cosmic meaning to something that mostly seems meaningless. He’s not much of a believer, but with the yesterday that he had, he’s willing to believe just long enough to give himself some peace. The sun is just starting to poke its head over the horizon, and Owen’s got coffee brewing because he knows that there’s no way he’s getting back to sleep. He’s got to find the courage to face the day. He’s been spared death. His cancer didn’t kill him, and now, he owes it to the people he loves to be strong, and if he can’t be strong, he’ll settle for breaking down when he’s alone.

Austin was a new opportunity for Owen. He’s good at those. When things go wrong, he’s a firm believer in creating something new. Ditch the past, and move forward. When T.K. had overdosed, he decided it was time to start something new yet again. In the time since, he’s created the nicest station in all of Texas, but it is not architectural inspiration that gets the job done. It’s the people. He’s always said that the firehouse has always been his family, and now more than ever, that’s still true. He came to Austin not knowing anyone, so the 126 has become the center of not just his work life but his social circle as well. They are the people he wants to celebrate his victories with, and they’re also the people he worries about when the chips are down. He’s got so much love around him now, and it’s a wonderful feeling, but it also means that he has so much more to lose than he ever has before.

Owen worries about what will happen to the station after this loss. They’ve become like a well-oiled machine, and they’ve learned to function as smoothly as they can with each person’s strong suits. They lessen each other’s weak areas and pull each other when they’re feeling down. They’re still getting used to Tommy, but everything was going well. The 126 was adjusting, and they were bouncing back after Michelle left to follow her passions. It seemed that every time they started to get settled that chaos would strike again and send them into a whole new tailspin. Owen doesn’t know how many high-stress, high-heartbreak situations they can take. He hopes they don’t bottle up the hard feelings they will face in the coming days and months.

When he gets up, before the sun has pulled itself fully into the sky, he sends T.K. a text. He trusts his son, but he’s still a father. He still stays up late at night fretting over his kid and praying that he’ll make it through the week unscathed. Maybe this hasn’t always been true in the past, but T.K. is his first priority, and Owen knows that something like the death of Tim can shake anyone to their core, especially someone who has always been raw and sensitive like an exposed nerve. T.K.’s been better lately. He’s been happier, and he hasn’t had to see his therapist as often, but no matter how good someone feels, one crisis can cause them to go spiraling backward, and Owen cannot let that happen, but he also knows that he can’t be too pushy or overbearing, so he keeps his text simple, _Are you okay? I’m here if you need to talk._ And he hopes that if T.K. isn’t okay that he’ll reach out for help. Owen doesn’t care if T.K. talks to him, but he has to talk to someone when life gets too overwhelming.

Owen isn’t sure how the rest of his team is going to cope with this crippling blow. Many of them have already been through a lot. They each have traumas and hurts that shape how they see the world and react to calls. They’ve learned to come together over their hardships. They’ve become so close over the past few months, and when you’re that close, it makes it hard to go bravely into the danger. You start to second guess your instincts, and when that happens, you may make deadly mistakes. When you’re a first responder, you can’t psych yourself out. You’ve got to maintain your focus even in the face of fear. The minute you freeze up, you put yourself in a bad situation, and it’s Owen’s job to make sure that no one freezes up. He has to keep the team’s confidence up and remind them that they are still capable. Somehow, he has to convince them that while losing Tim was tragic, it wasn’t something that they could have changed. It just was, and while there are always more solutions in retrospect, they trusted themselves at that moment, and they worked to the best of their ability.

Will Judd be thrown back, thinking about the devastating loss of his crew? Judd’s made a lot of process with his PTSD, but Owen knows better than anyone that PTSD doesn’t just go away, even with a lot of work. Usually, it lingers for quite some time, even as the symptoms mostly dissipate. Owen doesn’t feel his own symptoms much anymore, but they’re still there, sometimes, and there’s no rhyme or reason to when they appear, but traumatic situations certainly never help. Owen knows that Judd has a good support system. Grace would go to the ends of the Earth to make sure that her husband is okay, but there are times when it doesn’t matter how good the people around you are. You have to fight yourself, and you have to learn to face the fears and hurts that you’d rather shove aside. Owen admires the progress Judd has made because he knows how hard it is to wake up with your whole life changed. He knows how hard it is to move forward and find a new purpose when your old one is suddenly gone.

Will Marjan think twice before trusting her instincts? Marjan’s best quality when on duty is her ability to trust her instincts. She’s not a rule-follower, but she’s also not reckless. She knows what she can handle, and her confidence allows her to complete insane feats. She makes what she does seem superhuman, but the real skill she has is to know her limits because when you know your limits, you can dive into a situation without overthinking it. Marjan is savvy, strong, and morally-driven. She knows who she is, and as long as she remembers to keep her pride by her side, she doesn’t have issues. Owen worries that she’ll have more doubts. She’ll think twice when she only needs to think once. Owen doesn’t want anyone on his team to be reckless, but he needs them to listen to their gut, especially Marjan because she knows what she has to do in an emergency without having to fret too much about it.

Will Mateo feel secure about his place on the team? Mateo always had his doubts that he belonged on the team. He feels stupid, Owen knows that, and no matter how much anyone tries to tell him differently, Mateo always feels like the kid-probie, who is trying to fill firefighter shoes that are perpetually too big for his feet. Mateo still has a lot to learn, but he does things that others think are unimportant. His contributions don’t always go noticed, but that doesn’t make them unimportant. He may never have viral videos of himself saving people as Marjan does. He might not be able to deduce with pinpoint accuracy like Paul, or he might not be able to look like a force of authority like Judd, but he is important to them. That’s what is so great about the 126— no one is replaceable. They can throw more bodies into roles, but they’ll have their own unique contributions.

Will Paul’s wall of reassurance crack? Paul can read people from across the firehouse, but he is hard to read. He’s self-contained, and he doesn’t often let it show when he’s hurt or angry. He’s an emotional stabilizer in a firehouse filled with passionate and lively people, and he is a great listener, but Owen worries that Paul keeps too much to himself. With so much that Paul doesn’t show others that he’s bound to break down eventually. Paul knows how to handle his emotions, but a person can only take so much, especially a highly empathetic person like Paul. He takes on other people’s pain, and Owen wants him to know that the crew is willing to take on some of his pain as well.

Will Tommy forgive herself? She had been tough on Tim, which was just how she operated. Owen knew that you had to be tough sometimes to keep everyone safe and make sure that they could live up to their potential. Still, it was never easy having to be the bad guy, even when it was warranted. It was even harder when you didn’t have a chance to show the other part of you that wasn’t strict and severe. Tommy was a good person, that was for sure, and Owen had no doubt that given time, she and Tim would have developed a better bond. Unfortunately, time was never a guarantee.

And then there’s Nancy, who was without a doubt the closest to Tim. She’ll take the loss the hardest, and Owen knows enough about her that he knows she’ll have trouble adjusting to working without Tim by her side. They’ve been through a lot together. Nancy had just lost Michelle, and now she was losing Tim too. At least Michelle was still around, even if she didn’t check in as much as she promised she would. Tim was gone forever, and that would be a hard reality for Nancy to swallow.

Owen considers his own feelings on the loss, and he can’t shake the idea that he yet again escaped death when it should have been him. When he got cancer, the universe seemed to be righting itself, but then he had survived that, and it felt off-balance again. He was overstaying his welcome, and somehow, he kept surviving even though he was sure that he’d used up his fair share of lives.

The firehouse isn’t going to recover from this loss for a while, Owen knows. It doesn’t matter if you lose your whole crew or you lose just one of those people, any loss still strikes a firehouse to its core. A firehouse is only as great as the people in it. It doesn’t matter how fancy it looks, a firehouse without good firefighters and good paramedics will never have the heart it needs to survive. They’ll feel Tim in those halls long after their grief has faded and things have gone back to “normal”— whatever normal means. For now, they’ll have to do the best they can. They’ll have to learn to lean on each other and seek help when they need it, but they didn’t get where they are without resilience.

## Mornings Always Come Too Soon

When the morning comes, Mateo isn’t ready for it. Everything seems more real in the light, and he doesn’t think he can face the brightness. He wants to roll down his blinds and hide in his apartment until someone drags him away, but he knows that’s not an option. He’s got to be normal, or as normal as he can be under circumstances like these. Inaction is only going to make him feel worse, reminding me of all the actions he could’ve done and didn’t do when Tim was in danger. Mateo has made it through the night, but his mind is still dense with the feelings that don’t seem to abate, so he goes for a run, and he hopes that moving his body will shake off the fizzy feelings loose from the pit of his stomach.

What-ifs loop in Mateo’s head to the rhythm of his feet against the pavement. _There’s nothing I could have done_ , Mateo tries to remind himself, but it does nothing to break the wonders that will perpetually be in his head. There’s always another option in life. Mateo believes for everything that goes wrong, there’s something that he could have done better. He has the unshakable feeling that if he were somehow better that the results would be better. He feels so small and so limited. He’s finally made it to be a firefighter; yet, he still doesn’t feel like he belongs. He feels like an imposter, and he keeps waiting to fit in and feel like he’s finally got what it takes, but no matter how long he does the job, he still keeps thinking that one day the 126 is going to see that he never belonged and that he never had what it takes to be a firefighter. He worries that he’s too dumb. He fears he’s incompetent. He knows none of them would say that those things were true, but that doesn’t mean he believes it.

Mateo’s still exhausted. It’s only just become day, and he’s barely gotten any sleep, but his body needs to get going. Doing something will make him feel less powerless. When he was a kid, loss used to be so much easier. He’d pray to God, and even if things still hurt, at least they made sense. Now, it’s not like he doesn’t believe, but his faith is less of a sure thing. He mostly has it in moments of desperation when belief is the only thing that can give him any comfort. It’s easier to believe in God when you are alone. In those lonely, pained moments, Mateo thinks it would be easy to believe in anything. But it is the God he was raised with that always pulls him in and provides nostalgic comfort. As much he is filled with uncertainty, Mateo wants to believe, so sometimes he can brush away his doubts for the safe cocoon of ignorance.

With all the doubts and sorrows that threaten to fill him to the brim, Mateo’s running. Running is what he does when he needs to clear his head and shake the jumble of words that have gone unspoken. He doesn’t know where he’s going, but going somewhere is not the point, so he lets his feet move in whatever way feels right. He doesn’t want to have to think too hard right now, so he lets his instincts take over and focuses on his breathing. In that way, running is like meditation. Mateo has never been one who has the disposition to sit down and meditate, but he can do this. He can push against the air and center his thoughts through movement. As much as he tries not to think, he can’t stop. The thoughts bombard him, and he knows that trying to censor them only creates toxicity in his body, so he lets the thoughts exist, and he doesn’t try to push them away just because they’re uncomfortable, but running distracts him enough that he doesn’t have to give his full mental energy to the looming thoughts.

Above all, Mateo feels so stupid. It’s his default feeling when things go wrong, and he knows why, but knowing why has never changed how incompetent he always feels. He’s a troublemaker. He doesn’t mean to mess things up, but somehow, he always seems to mess them up. He gets confused or he is focusing on the wrong thing. Whatever goes wrong, Mateo is never doing what he should be where he should be doing it. He imagines being there to warn Tim. If he’d just been several feet closer, maybe he could have done something, but he was so far away, and he doesn’t even remember what he was doing when it happened, so chances are that it was nothing _that_ important. He should have known better— they all should have— but Mateo especially. He’s the probie, which means that he has the least important things to do— _right? –_ so if anyone could have dropped what they were doing to be near Tim, it should have been him. He failed, and he wonders how long it will be until people call him out for his constant failures.

He wonders if things would be different if he was somehow better. If he was _better_. He’s always been towards the bottom of the pack in everything he does, and on the 126, it’s exactly the same. He isn’t the biggest. He isn’t the bravest. He isn’t the smartest. He does his work, but he can’t help but feel like he doesn’t do it quite up to par. He’s wanted to be a firefighter for so long, and in the face of this tragedy, he can’t help but worry that he was never meant to be one. He wonders if the truth is that he’s never been good enough and he never will be. It pains him to think, but he has to be realistic with himself. The way he sees it, he’s just not the type of guy who excels at _anything._

Mateo knows that he should have been there for Tim. He’s made it a priority to attend to details that no one else did because he wanted to show that despite what people kept telling him, he wasn’t stupid. He doesn’t have the observational skills of Paul, but he goes to extreme lengths to do the job right, and maybe he goes to extreme lengths to overcompensate for all the deficiencies that he feels make him trouble.

There’s a part of him that knows that what happened wasn’t his fault, but that part of him is buried under the louder part of him that tells him he can do nothing right. He is just a troublemaker. He’s always been a troublemaker, and wherever he goes, disaster follows.

Mateo runs until he’s out of breath, and he continues to run long past the point of exhaustion. He can’t seem to stop his feet. He’s been training for a marathon, so he normally wouldn’t be so exhausted so early in a run, but with so little sleep and pushing himself rather than pacing himself, it’s no wonder that Mateo’s run isn’t normal. The grief has knocked him out of step, and now, he’s gone from being an adept runner to trying not to trip over his feet.

Mateo’s experienced loss before, and it never gets easier. You learn coping techniques and the pain lessens over time, but it doesn’t become something you’re ever prepared for. It’s not like running. No amount of practice makes grief any less strenuous. It is surprising, rage-inducing, and plain sad every time it happens. Mateo’s best friend’s brother had died when they were sixteen. He had known that Rex was going to die— they’d known for months that the cancer was terminal— but that hadn’t mitigated any of the shock Mateo felt when he got the news that Rex had actually died. He’d prayed for weeks, hoping for a miracle. He’d sustained himself with that hope, thinking that somehow it would be okay. It felt like a blow to everything Mateo believed in when Rex died anyway. Mateo has learned that humans can’t stop having that little blip of hope. Even cynics, somewhere deep aside, are desperately wanting to believe that the unlikely good may happen.

He runs up, and he feels himself still in front of the church. The steeple is foreboding, and the cross on the front is so big. It used to fill him with sheer awe, but now, it fills him with so much more: confusion, fear, hope, dread, anger, joy. And yeah, it still fills him with awe because there will always be a part of him that loves the church and God. Even as he doubts the meaning of life and the cosmic forces behind it, he still takes comfort in the idea that some greater than all someones is looking down on him. He likes the idea of heaven and life after death because the idea of there being nothingness when you die terrifies him because losing your sense of self is the worst fate for any person. He never wants to stop being himself, and he wants to believe Tim has not stopped being himself either.

Tim Rosewater is gone, and Mateo wants there to be a reason for such a tragic loss. He wants it to make sense, but his thoughts are jumbled, and he wonders if this is a side-effect of his dyslexia or if everyone feels this way in the face of grief.

## Late Mourning

Michelle doesn't find out that Tim has died until two days after it has happened. She’d been swamped with work to the point that she’d barely paid attention to the news, let alone her text messages. She knew about the volcano, of course— she wasn’t that detached— but she hadn’t let herself think that someone she knew had been injured. She’d shoved away any worry because it didn’t serve her, and she pushed herself further into work. Maybe that attitude made her selfish, she wasn’t sure, but it’s how she’s always been. When things go wrong, focus on just one issue and pretend away the rest.

When she gets the news, Nancy calls her, sounding a lot sad and a little mad. Nancy doesn’t wait to break the news. In fact, she sounds like she expects Michelle to somehow already know, but it’s not like Michelle has been talking to many of her ex-workers. She hasn’t even had much time to talk to Carlos. It wasn’t for a lack of want, but with the pandemic and so many changes in her life, it was the perfect storm for growing distant from the people she cared about. With how packed her schedule has been, she barely makes time for her mom! She wants to be the kind of person who will fight for friendships and who always answers her messages, but that’s just not Michelle.

She becomes obsessed with something, and then, she cannot stop thinking about it. It takes up all the time and it robs her of all the attention she should commit to other things. Her mind lags behind what Nancy has been saying. Finally, Michelle says, “Why didn’t anyone tell me sooner?”

She can hear Nancy scoff, “You know we love you, Michelle, but you haven’t exactly been here. And you aren’t great about answering calls.”

“Yeah,” Michelle agrees. “I’m sorry.” She’s sorry for a lot of things that have happened in her life, even the ones that are not her fault. She’s sorry for not spending more time with people before she lost them. She’s sorry for all the times she’s focused on all the wrong things. She’s sorry for the misses calls and texts. She’s sorry for the missed opportunities of reaching out. She’s not sorry for knowing Tim, though, even though it aches that he is gone. She’s not sorry about all the good times they shared.

“About not answering or Tim?” Michelle can’t tell if the question is hypothetical, but she answers it.

“Both,” Michelle confirms.

Nancy’s voice sounds choked, “We needed you. Tim was really upset when you left. He took it the hardest.”

“I know, but I had to do this.” She’s explained why she left. She couldn’t have stayed when her passion changed. 

“We get that. We’re not mad at you for leaving. We’re mad at you for not being there for us,” Nancy’s voice is angry and accusatory. Michelle knows she’d never speak this way if she wasn’t dealing with a broken heart.

“I’m sorry,” Michelle tries again, but that won’t absolve the sorrow she feels or the guilt that is starting to eat at her. She can apologize all that she wants, but there’s no way to make the situation better for anyone. 

“You’ve said that. I don’t want your apologies. I just thought you should know what happened. Even if you’ve got a whole new life away from us.”

“Is there anything I can do? Did someone take in Buster?” She sounds like she’s offering to take him in, and she regrets the words. She doe not have time for a cat right now.

“Tommy took him,” Nancy says with relief in her voice. Michelle feels as relieved as Nancy sounds. “He’s doing well. Dogs get all the credit for being loyal, but cats can be pretty loyal too.”

“I trust Tommy,” Michelle says. “I wouldn’t have left if I didn’t, but she’s had a hell of a start.”

“Yeah,” Nancy says without much life in her voice. She and Tim were an unbreakable duo. Ever since they’d both been on the team, they’d gotten along. They were so distinct from one another, but they somehow fit. They made each other feel better when calls got bad and they understood the rigors of the job in ways that other people couldn’t.

“How are you, Nance? Are you okay?” _Of course she’s not okay,_ Michelle scolds herself.

There’s a long pause between them. “Listen, Michelle, I’m not really in the mood for talking this all through right now. I just wanted to make sure that you knew about Tim. I know you cared about him.”

“I do,” Michelle adds before saying goodbye and hanging up the phone. When the line is silent, Michelle feels the weight of the truth landing straight on her. Her eyes water, and she’s not a crier, but it’s been a stressful time. This has all happened during a pandemic. Lots of bad things have happened to people, but she was fortunate that no one close to her had lost their life. The tragedy had not been hers, but this one is.

She doesn’t regret following her passion, but she wishes she’d kept in contact better. She’s never been good at maintaining relationships. She’s always been mission-oriented, focusing on what she can do for the world and forgetting all the parts of her life that give her joy. Michelle tries to remember the last time she talked to Tim, and she can’t quite place when that was. They’d never been chat on the phone after work pals, but they’d hung out at the same places, and they’d talked when the moment arose, so he was still someone important to her. She still hated the idea that someone she spent so much time with was gone because when you go through long shifts with someone, that is bound to bond you.

Michelle has never been one for long goodbyes, but it would have been nice to give Tim a final goodbye. They can’t even have a normal funeral because the pandemic makes even that last goodbye dangerous. She can’t see Tim again. He is gone, and she doesn’t get the chance of closure, so questions rally through her mind. She wonders if she could have changed things. If she was there, Michelle doesn’t think that anything would be different, but she still can’t help but wonder. Has she let down people she cares about yet again?

But the truth is that the questions she asks aren’t ones that will ever have answers. She doesn’t have time to battle her thoughts. She’s always coped best by throwing herself into work. Michelle takes a breath. She gets to work again. She can grieve later, when it is dark and her tears can hide in the night, but it is only late morning, and she is going to get through the day.

## Harsh Daylight

It doesn’t take long for Paul to notice all the ways the firehouse has changed since Tim had died. You can feel the difference as soon as you walk into eh building, and it continues to percolate as the firefighters try to adjust to the new order that doesn’t include Tim. Paul knew that it wasn’t going to be easy, but he may have underestimated how hard it would be to function as a firehouse. He’s never been part of a firehouse quite like the 126 before, though. Stations were commonly tight-knit, but his had always been cliquey, and they’d never quite made him feel as at home.

He’s always been good at observation, but it doesn’t take his skills to notice how profoundly things have changed in just a short time. Everything has been thrown in a new direction. They were just starting to get used to Tommy’s role at their station, and just as soon as things were starting to even out, mother nature came in and wrecked their order. They have to learn to get back into a new swing of things, and it hasn’t been easy for anyone. They’re still mourning, but they are back at work, trying to make the best of things.

Everyone has been quiet. It feels like they’re in a ghost town, and it’s unnerving to see such vibrant with so little to say. Paul doesn’t usually say much. He’s always been the type to sit back and read a book as the others played games, but he still likes to chime in and throw in a quip every once in a while. Without Tim, the dynamic has been shifted, so no one bothers saying much. They greet each and they use pleasantries, but it’s like no one can figure out how to break the silence. Paul doesn’t push them to speak, but he observes that they are not.

He sees the way Nancy’s eyes glisten when she thinks no one is looking. She keeps to herself when she can, hiding in the corners of the firehouse when she’s not needed elsewhere. She does her job, but she doesn’t look at people the way she used to, and she mumbles when she speaks. She’s forlorn, and Paul can see when her thoughts shift to Tim because there’s a light in her eyes that dims when her attention is pulled back into the present.

Paul feels how hard Marjan punches when they spar. She’s got so much anger, and he wants to be there for whenever he can. He’d felt that same kind of all-encompassing anger when he had lost his dad, so he knows how important it is to find healthy outlets and to know that other people are willing to help if you need it. He knows how hard that anger is to combat because it is the most combative feeling, so he suggests they go for a round of boxing whenever he sees Marjan start to tense as the anger becomes more intense.

T.K. and Judd, he notices, are more alike than either would admit. They both run hot and cold. They go from quiet moodiness to snapping at anyone who looks at them the wrong way. They’ve always tended to anger, but not the same kind of anger as Marjan has. Theirs is more animalistic, and it’s more unpredictable. Marjan handles her anger well, but Paul worries about how the anger impacts T.K. and Judd.

Mateo seems okay, but Paul sees him praying more than he ever did before. Paul isn’t even sure that Mateo is _that_ religious, but he knows that Mateo was searching for higher meaning. Paul can understand the draw to a higher power, but he doesn’t have one for himself. He sees the guilt in Mateo’s face, and he wonders if that’s connected to Mateo’s newly revived faith.

Tommy, meanwhile, is trying to deal with some guilt of her own. Paul can tell that she feels bad about what she said to Tim, but he doesn’t know much about her to understand her thought process more fully. She tries to put on a strong face when she comes to work, but he can sense the cracks of insecurity. She has a lot to adjust to, and her starting moments were less than ideal, but Paul has a feeling she’ll get better with time and learn that they’re a welcoming bunch.

Owen is nearly unreadable, but he’s more cautious with the team. He takes more risks himself while not letting his crew do things that he deems, “too high risk.” Paul knows that Owen wouldn’t think twice before running into danger to save any one of them or even a stranger. It doesn’t seem healthy, but Owen doesn’t seem open to the idea that his issues may be more alive than he thought.

While the people are downtrodden, Buttercup has been extra lively. He scurries around the firehouse, trying to cheer anyone up who looks like they’re in a sad mood. Everyone smiles when they see Buttercup.

The team dynamic no longer runs smoothly. It’s bumpy and they all feel a little clumsy on calls. The paramedics are the most affected, but even the firefighters seem out of sync. They aren’t communicating as clearly and it feels like they’re back to the days when they just met each other and had to know how each person operated. It’s stranger now because they aren’t strangers and they know each other well that it shouldn’t be hard to adjust, but it has been hard, and sometimes, it feels like they’ll always have a bumpy dynamic.

With all the quiet and feelings, Paul spends most of his time with his nose in a book, and reading seems to calm his nerves enough that he can breathe through any grief that pops up. Paul wonders when the appropriate time is to start laughing and joking again.

There’s nothing predictable about grief, but Paul thinks he’s handling it fine. He’s not yelling. He’s not crying. He’s moving forward. Paul is going through the process swiftly and easily. It’s not that he’s not upset. It’s just that he isn’t reacting in extremes like the rest of his team. His response has been more demure, and he wants to keep balanced for his team because he knows that’s what they need of him. He’s not grieving in the normal way. But what’s the right way to grieve? He’s grieving the way he knows how, and he’s not sure it’s the best way, but it gets him through his shifts and through evenings alone.

Paul looks in the mirror, taking in his reflection, and he notices that maybe he’s not okay as he thought. He looks sullen and quiet. His eyes look tired and his clothes look just a bit more unkempt than normal. Looking into the mirror, he can’t fool himself. He can’t pretend that he’s perfectly normal, even though the wrong things are so subtle that any normal person couldn’t notice them. He’s grieving. He’s grieving just as much as anyone else. Paul’s learned to process hurt efficiently to save himself from the prolonged pain. The trick is that he doesn’t try to push what he’s feeling away. He’s learned to accept his feelings or at least deal with them as they come. He’s not perfect at it— no human is— but he is doing his best, and he’s trying to get through the pain without anyone noticing that he is hurt.

## The Hottest Noon

Tim has been dead for a week, and Marjan is still angry. It still feels like it has just happened, and Marjan knows that a week isn’t long, but it’s much too long for her to still be angry. The rage has not yet become embers. It is hot and she struggles to control the intensity. Marjan is not an angry person. She usually can let problems and hardships roll off her shoulders. She doesn’t believe in anger. She thinks it does more harm than good, and she knows that it doesn’t fix anything; it only prolongs her own suffering. Even so, she can’t seem to get rid of the anger. It keeps bubbling up when she least expects it, and it makes her feel like a frenzied mess of a person. She doesn’t like to look herself in the mirror when she is angry because that is not who she is. It is someone she doesn’t recognize, and it is someone she needs to escape. She doesn’t know how to stop the rage, though. How does she move on from the anger to whatever comes next?

She’s been good at keeping her feelings within. She’s cried a little, but she has hides the part of her that wants to destroy everything she sees because she doesn’t know how to express that without bringing down the people around her. She calls her mom when she can, because her mom is the calmest person on earth, but even those calls have limited impacts on Marjan’s state of mind. She can’t help but wonder if something about Tim’s death broke something inside her.

The rage isn’t stagnant, but it’s always there, waiting to come out and poke at her. The rage is dull when it isn’t so sharp that she feels like she has to lash out just to ease her nerves. It is in the back in her, aching but far enough away that she can take some calming breaths and feign normalcy. The rage is too bright, most times, like noon sun. It is bright in her eyes, so bright that it’s hard to discern the rage from any other feeling. They all muddle together under the brightness of the anger. She knows other feelings are blossoming, but they all fail to shine as brightly as her anger.

She’s been doing a lot of boxing with Paul, and he doesn’t say a word when she asks him to lend a hand. When she’s alone, she spends time with a punching bag. She thinks it’s better to share the rage with a friend, but sometimes, she is too ashamed of how angry she still is even after time has passed. Marjan hasn’t talked about it. She’s not one to keep her feelings bottled up, but with all the grief everyone is feeling, she doesn’t want to say too much. She doesn’t know how to put anger into words, and the more time passes, the more abstract the anger becomes.

The boxing doesn’t quite cut it. It helps her blow off steam but not enough steam, so she joins the Austin Annihilators. It feels good to be back on her wheels. The physicality of roller derby helps Marjan let out some of the tension she has been holding. It lets her let the anger out without having red knuckles. She gets more bruises, but that’s just part of the sport, and the ache in her body after playing feels good. It gives her an escape and a purpose. In roller derby, her anger is a tool. 

Derby girls have a reputation for being tough and aggressive, but the truth is that while they’re badasses on the track, they’re a family. They don’t push Marjan to talk about anything, but she knows they have her back. They’ll point it out if she seems distracted, and Marjan feels more comfortable expressing her grief to them because they didn’t know Tim. She can get some perspectives that aren’t so close. It’s refreshing to have some new faces, ones who can keep an open mind and keep her from getting too lost in her feelings. Most people wouldn’t understand how rewarding roller derby is. They think it’s just violent— because they’re girls playing a contact sport— but it’s a sport just like any other, and for many of the girls, it’s the best emotional outlet that they can find.

It’s hard to sustain rage, but Marjan wants to. She wants to hold on because letting it go means she’ll have to face the other feelings that the anger has been covering up. But ultimately, she can’t keep the anger burning in her heart. The more she tries to hold that rage close to her heart, the more the sadness settles in her core. She doesn’t want the anger to become a part of her more than it already has. She wants to relinquish its claim on her and learn to move on from the pain her anger has caused. She wants to feel the sorrow if she must because grief is not just anger, and she must explore all parts of her grief before she can heal.

## The Other Side of the Dome

It’s late afternoon, and they’ve just gotten back to the firehouse, and the morning had gone easily, but things had changed when a big fire broke out in the afternoon. Judd can feel his heart hammering in his chest. His mind has been on the edge. It’s been preoccupied with fear and burning with the repetitive thought that it’s only a matter of time before he loses someone again. Tim dying has brought up old memories, and they make jittery and anxious. He’s been snappish and everyone can tell that he’s not his normal self. He’s had to schedule more appointments with his therapist, and that’s fine, but it shows that he’s not fine. He feels like he should be over this by now, but his PTSD has been stronger in the past few weeks than it has been since just a few months after he started his therapy. While it’s been nearly two years since his last crew died, the wound is still fairly fresh, but Judd just wants it to go away.

Marjan nearly got trapped in a burning building and the fear of losing someone else had hung over them all as they waited to see if she made it out alive. Judd had almost lost it when she was in there. He heard explosions in his head and he struggled to keep his head in the present. Owen had noticed and let Judd take a step back, but it hadn’t done much to help. Judd didn’t want to step back. He wanted to help, but there is nothing he could do but wait. The seconds dragged as he stared at the building, trying to get his head back where it should be so he could actually do his job rather than feeling like he’s losing his mind.

She’d come out of the building with a grin, an ashy one but a grin nonetheless. Her voice had shaken, but she’d reassured them that she was okay. Even now that he knows that Marjan is fine, he doesn’t feel any better. Marjan’s back to being her usual daredevil self, but Judd feels shaky. He’s already lost enough, and he struggles throughout the shift. Anytime a situation gest vaguely dangerous, he has to fight the temptation to pull his team members and try to shield them from what his brain keeps telling him is dangerous. He wants to protect the ones he loves, but when they’re on the job, he can’t let his protective urges get in the way of them doing their jobs.

He goes home that evening, and he feels a constant throb of anxiety. “What’s wrong?” Grace asks her husband, immediately seeing through his façade. He should have known that he couldn’t hide this from her, and to be honest, he doesn’t even want to try. He’s learned that it doesn’t serve him to keep silent. He and Grace have been stronger since they learned to communicate in more productive ways.

“Marjan’s gonna get herself killed one of these days,” Judd grumbles, “Or T.K., or the Captain. Even Mateo seems more reckless these days.” The more he thinks about it, the more likely it seems that someone is going to get hurt, but certain members concern him more because they dive into danger without thinking their actions through.

“Do you think you might just be extra worried?” Grace asks, face gentle. He feels her hand on his face, and it makes him feel at peace. He thanks the heavens that Grace is a part of his life. He never deserved someone so perfect. He was honored to call her his wife.

Judd fights the temptation to yell. He used to be the guy who couldn’t talk about what he was feeling without shutting down, so at least he’s still got his communication. Therapy has helped him deal with tough conversations better. “Of course, I’m extra worried. I just don’t want to lose anyone.”

Grace pulls Judd into her arms, and she wraps her smaller body around his. “It’s normal to worry. I worry too,” she admits. “I was so scared when I got the call the day of the explosion.”

“I thought I lost everything that day, but yet again, I’m in a position where I have so much to lose.” No one could replace his old crew, but he’d created bonds that were just as special with the new 126. They were still building his relationships, but at the end of the day, they were there for one another.

“And isn’t it the best feeling in the world to have so much to lose?” Before, he would have grumbled and shut down when the conversation got too “mushy,” but he didn’t mind it so much anymore.

Judd nods, “It sure is.” He hates the thought of losing another person from his family, but he knows that it’s a whole lot better to have them than to push them away so that he doesn’t get hurt.

## You Can’t Escape the Sunset

It’s only been a couple of weeks since Tim has died, so they’ve all begun to heal, but the wound still feels fresh. Austin is still recovering from the damage that Mother Nature had brought down on them, so all around, people were more demure, but the sadness was lifting, and for those who didn’t lose loved ones, they could go back to being their regular, happy selves. Not everyone is so lucky. Grief is still heavy upon Austin. In some ways, it is a comfort not to move on. Grief feels incomplete when it is rushed, so when it doesn’t feel like a stabbing pain or a dull ache, it is like a weighted blanket, heavy but somehow comforting. Grief is a weight on your chest, but you need that weight to push out the pent up feelings that result from the complexity of loss.

Grief can impact you even when you’re at a distance from it. It ripples and touches people you wouldn’t expect it to touch. Carlos didn’t know Tim well, but he’s been around the station enough that Tim’s absence is tangible. He can feel the empty space in their lives, and it makes him anxious and plain old _sad_. Because he’s used to seeing his favorite firehouse being lively and joking with each other non-stop when they’re not on a call. The whole 126 is quieter. Their wounds are too fresh to make jokes, and they’re just trying to get back to functioning because they all know that there are still lives to save. There are always more lives to save, no matter how many they lose, and that’s one of the hardest parts of being a first responder, you’re fighting a neverending battle, and for all the grief you’re forced to carry, the potential for loss never ends. It may be someone close to you, or it may be someone you’ve only just met, but first responders constantly deal with loss. That loss is worth all the lives they save. Even Buttercup understands that something dreadful has happened, and he’s been extra attentive to the firefighters, making sure that they get attention whenever they need them. They’re not back to normal, but they’re staying together and that’s what is most important.

Michelle’s been calling more. With the pandemic and her new vocation keeping her busy, Michelle hasn’t had a lot of time to talk to Carlos, but she’s been calling him every other day now, which for Michelle, is unheard of. It’s nice to hear her voice, but there’s so much distance between them. The more time they spend apart, the harder it is to talk like they used to. Carlos can’t help but think that once the grief has worn off that Michelle will go back to being spacey. He’s always known that she needed her space, but he still misses her. She’s still around, but it’s not the same. Still, he’ll hold onto the friendship as much as it can, and maybe with a little luck, it will survive the changes that threaten to tear them apart. Changes just might bring them together, though, if they’re lucky.

There’s one person that Carlos worries about the most. T.K.’s been on edge. He hasn’t been pushing Carlos away in the same way that he used to, but the lightheartedness he’s gained during his time in Austin has started to backtrack. T.K. barely talks about how he’s feeling. He tries to put on a brave face. He says that work has been keeping his mind off things, but Carlos knows better. He knows that T.K. is not as okay as he says he is. He’s not on the ledge, but he could get there if he keeps pushing himself without confiding any of his feelings. The tension in T.K.’s shoulders is deeper, and Carlos knows that there’s not much he can do other than being there, and he will be there. He’ll wait for T.K. to come home as many late nights as he needs to. If Carlos is being honest with himself, he’s not okay either. He needs to hold T.K. just as much as T.K. needs to hold him. They’ve been through so much already, and Carlos desperately wants life to be easy if only for a little while.

With all that has happened, Carlos feels more anxious. He was just starting to get over the fear he had after T.K. had been shot, but now all the worries that he had worked through are peeping out at him again. What happened to Tim could have happened to any member of the 126. There was no rhyme or reason to it; at the end of the day, it was a bad situation that got worse. It was the apathetic hand of nature throwing a wrench in their plans. That was scary to think about because it just shows that no matter how safe someone tries to stay, sometimes, there’s nothing you can do. No one could have anticipated that T.K. was going to shot or that there would be volcanic activity in Austin. Any day, something bad could happen to one of them. Carlos could lose someone important to him before they got to build their relationship in all the ways that Carlos would like to build it. He’s already started to imagine a future with T.K., and while their relationship is still new, something feels so right, and he can’t stand never getting the chance to know what might become of them, not as individuals but as a team.

He knows that his job is dangerous too, but he isn’t concerned about himself. It’s not that he has a disregard for his life, but his own fate isn’t something he wants to try to control. It’s harder to know that you have no power over what happens to the people you love because they’re the ones that Carlos wants to protect the most, but he’s learned on the job that you don’t get to choose who makes it through a hard situation. All you can do is do what you think is best in a given scenario and hope that it turns out as well as it possibly can. Tim’s death reminds Carlos just how fragile life is. In an instant, it can be ripped from a person before they can tighten their hold on it.

Tim had so much more life to live. That’s what everyone who didn’t really know him says as a consolation, but it’s such a generic comment that fails to captivate all the things that made Tim a real human and not a facsimile of one. They know that he was young and healthy. They don’t know enough to specify more than that, but if they knew Tim, they’d know that he had so much planned for the future. He had people to reconnect with, and he had a cat to take care of. He had friends and he had a whole big family. He wanted to continue to help people.

## Dusk

The loss of Tim has eaten at Tommy. Her family has been supportive. The girls had made her sympathy cards and Charles had made her their favorite meal with remnants from their freezer, but as understanding as her family was, there was still an unease that she couldn’t communicate with them. It was a feeling that you could only truly know if you had been there that day.

She hasn’t been sleeping well, and she figures that’s probably the same boat the 126 is in. She’s at home, but she’s getting done some work that she has yet to address— application files. She hasn’t been able to open the materials. She knows that there’s a lot of good people in the folder, but it’s still too soon. Hiring a new team member doesn’t feel right. Still, it’s something Tommy needs to bite the bullet and do, not just because it’s required but because delaying the inevitable doesn’t help anyone, but she doesn’t want it to seem like she’s moving on too fast, which is why she’s starting her hunt for a new paramedic in the safety of her own home so that no one catches sight of her moving things along when the wound is still fairly fresh. Buster is curled up beside her as Charles gets the twins ready for bed. It’s been hard to relinquish that duty, but she’s promised to read them an extra story before they sleep.

Tim Rosewater isn’t replaceable, but they need someone to stand where he stood. The empty space that he should be taking up is a cutting reminder of their grief, and while Tommy doesn’t want to rush their grief, she knows that they can’t move on until they have a permanent replacement for Tim and they can start to rebuild their team dynamics. No one will ever be like Tim Rosewater, so she needs to find someone who is distinct but still just as highly qualified as Tim was. It’s not an easy spot to fill, but given that the 126 is the most luxurious fire station in Austin, Tommy gets to pick from the best, all who want to be part of her team. She doesn’t deserve all this prestige!

With work being busy and family life being busier, Tommy hasn’t had a whole lot of time to herself to process what has happened to Tim. She didn’t think she needed the time because she didn’t even know him that well, but as she sits with the closed folder, she feels her shoulders tense with the weight of the decision. She’s not normally one to have a hard time making decisions. Even when the restaurant had gone out of business and Tommy had decided to go back to work, she had not labored over the decision much. She didn’t like the idea, and she struggled with not being home to look after her kids, but at the same time, she had never doubted that going back was what she needed to do. Her family needed her to work, and even if she didn’t like it, she was going to step up for them.

When she got to the job, she felt out of her element. She’d doubted then, but deep down she always knew that she had wound up exactly where she needed to be. She didn’t have a choice, but it still made her nervous to go back after all those years. She was a leader, and she felt pressure to do everything perfectly. In the process, she sometimes had to upset people. She had to be firm, but she was doing it so her paramedics could function properly. Then, Tim had died, and she started to wondered yet again if she made a mistake. Grief had shaken in her confidence when it was already dwindling.

Maybe Tommy didn’t know Tim well, but she wanted to. She didn’t just want to be the tough boss. She wanted to know what he was like as a person, and she wanted him to like her and not just respect her. She’d seen glimpses of him. She knew he had a sense of humor, and she’d witnessed him treating patients with a gentle hand. When she was picking up Buster, she’d also seen how many toys that Tim had given his cat. He didn’t seem to have many people close by, so he had doted on his cat, and the thought tugged on Tommy’s heart.

Tommy opens the folder, she looks it over once, but as she hears little pitter-patters of feet in the hall, she closes it again. She cannot make decisions tonight, no matter how much she knows she needs to. Her girls giggle as they enter the room, and they bounce to their mother, surrounding her on the couch. The new hire can wait a day. She puts the folder back on the coffee table, and Tommy focuses on her family. They decide to watch a movie, and Tommy makes herself comfortable on her couch. Buster curls up next to her. He’s become the girls’ new little friend, and even though Tommy never really got to talk to Tim as more than a boss, Buster makes her feel a little closer to the man she wishes she got to know.

She looks at her family and then at Buster. She can’t help but smile at the thought that they have grown. It may take her a while to get used to the idea, but the 126 is so much more than coworkers. They are a family, and she is part of that family. It never hurts to have more family, Tommy thinks. She knows that her daughters will grow up with even more love, and isn’t that what any parent wants for their kids?

## Freckles of Light

It’s been over a month since Tim has died, and Nancy is _mostly_ okay. That’s what she tells anyone who asks, anyway, and it’s _mostly_ right. She can do all the things that being a normal human requires. She can get out of bed without wanting to sob. She can make herself a meal and have an appetite to eat it. She doesn’t feel like curling up and blocking out the whole world just to get some escape from the emptiness that loss has left in her core. So, yeah, she’s doing okay. She’s surviving and with a little more time, the wound will heal, only leaving a scar. She knows these things take time, but she’s sick of the part of herself that still isn’t fully okay. She worries that she’ll never be fully okay. It scares her that missing Tim might be her new normal, and how does someone move on if they can never make peace with a loss?

She’s learned to go to work without feeling dread. It was hard at first to show up. The first shift she took after Tim died made her want to go back home and ignore the world forever. It had felt like everyone was watching her and asking her how she was. She didn’t know how she was. She was still working through all the feelings that were still so raw. She didn’t want to lie to them, but she also didn’t want them to think that she was too messed up to work. Maybe she couldn’t have saved Tim, but there were still plenty of people out there who needed her help, and she wasn’t going to give up on them. The reasons she had become a paramedic hadn’t changed. She still wanted to help people, and the calling even more urgent to her. Maybe being a paramedic had just been Michelle’s occupation, but it is Nancy’s vocation, and she refuses to give it up. So, she’s taught herself to shut down her feelings enough to get through the day while allowing enough to remain so that she can be compassionate.

For a while, she felt broken. She’d felt like she’d fallen from a skyscraper into a volcanic pit— a pile of shattered, melty parts. She had wondered if anyone could back from that. Was there any fixing the way she felt? It felt like a part of her had died with Tim, and as much as she wanted to fill the void, she knew that there was no way to replace the spot that Tim had left in her life. That hole smarted and itched, and there was no way to alleviate that feeling other than trying to wait it out.

She feels protective of Tim’s memory. He wasn’t close to his family, and he didn’t have anyone to go home to other than his cat. She hoped that he hadn’t died feeling lonely. She wished she knew if she had been enough for him. Had she supported him enough? Had their friendship eased any of the loneliness he might have felt? Had she been enough of a family? She couldn’t be sure, but she wanted to believe that he hadn’t secretly lived a miserable life because no one deserves to die feeling miserable. It was probably just her fears deepening their roots. She was projecting her own loneliness, maybe. But she hated the potential that what she feels in the absence of Tim was what he felt all the time.

Tim had been such a good guy, not perfect by any means, but he’d been brave and funny. There had always been a brightness in his eyes, even when his face sagged with fatigue. He’d always been ready for a joke and wanted to make the world a better place. Maybe he’d been a little whiny and Nancy knows she’s made so many jokes at his expense, but they’d all been tender-hearted. It was just how they showed affection, and they’d been like brother and sister in that way. They fought sometimes, but they were each other’s family. It would be so much easier if they were just coworkers, but when you work as closely as they did, there’s no such thing as just coworkers. You talk to them, you eat with them, you keep each other safe, and it sometimes feels like you’re the only people in the world who understand the rigors of the job. They’d shared a little bubble of knowing how the other one felt, and now, that bubble has popped, and Nancy didn’t know what to do.

There’s a part of Nancy that wants to hold onto the grief. She wants to mope in her upset and keep it burning her insides. The self-destructive nature of trying to tame her grief has allure. It’s addictive, and the more she lets it rage, the farther she is pulled from herself. She feels it melting her insides, and she thinks that maybe that feeling is retribution for all the mistakes she’s made, but no amount of penance makes her feel better. She can punish herself all she wants, but self-flagellation only drives her away from Tim’s memory. It puts her into a dark cave, alone and cold despite the fire in her core. She can’t engage. She can’t function. All she can do is feel bad about what her life has become. So, she’s learning that she can’t hold grief because it’s not something she’s got any power over. It’s time to let it go to be whatever it will be.

Nancy still takes each day one at a time. She’s tried to get back to normal the fast way before, and she’s found that by the end of the day, it only makes her feel worse, so she’s got to take it as slow as she needs. She’s got to be okay with taking one step forward and then two steps back. Progress is slow, but she still makes it, even with the setbacks and the bad days. The more time that passes, the fewer bad days she has. She can’t let herself get discouraged on those bad days. She has to remember that bad days don’t last forever just as that deep feeling of yearning to see Tim won’t last forever. She will smile again. She reminds herself how many smiles she has left to smile— so many if all goes well. The past is haunted, the future is haunting, but the present is a chance. She can make the most of the moment, or she can lose herself in it.

Nancy has started to appreciate the people in her life more. She longs to hear their voice, even when it’s just been a day or two since she has spoken to them. She’s constantly worrying that the conversations she has will be the last. She calls her parents more, her brother too, and they are concerned when she does, but they talk to her in cheery voices, trying to balance out the sadness they know she feels. She appreciates their efforts, but she’s not sure they help. It’s still comforting to hear the voices of the people who have been there through it all.

When she’s at work, she feels out of synch. She’s gotten used to having Tim there at every turn. The whole rhythm of the team has been thrown off, and the routines they’ve created to make their jobs easier have a missing link. She can’t remember a time when she felt so off-kilter. It’s like she’s got a hundred-pound weight on one half of her body. It’s hard to stay on her feet, but she learns how to center the weight so she’s not falling over all the time.

Each life she saves is still a reminder of the one she failed to save. There’s a loop of self-doubt that repeats in her head. It tells her that she will never be a good enough paramedic. It convinces her that it is her fault that Tim is dead. Sometimes, it tells her that she should have been the one to die instead. None of these thoughts are logical are consistent, but they are there, making her worry that there’s something deeply wrong with her.

It feels scary for things to go back to normal. It feels too much like they’re forgetting Tim. They’ve put a picture of him on the wall, but that’s just a two-dimensional token of him. It can’t possibly capture all that Tim was, and Nancy is afraid that moving on means letting Tim become nothing more than an old picture as the sheen of the frame starts to wear down and the shiny new firehouse grows old. Moving on feels traitorous, even though Nancy knows that it is what Tim would have wanted. She’s always hated when people say that, “It’s what Tim would have wanted,” because maybe it’s true, but it feels wrong to speak for someone who can never speak back.

She’s pieced herself back together, but no matter how much she pushes forward, Nancy still struggles. Because grief isn’t neat. It doesn’t stack up like the carefully cut layers of a five-tiered cake. It isn’t linear either. You may be angry one moment, depressed the next, and back to be angry by the time the next day rolls around. The five stages of grief are not stages at all because you don’t advance to one when you have completed the last. The stages of grief are like playing roulette. You tumble around, and it’s up to chance where you will land.

She wakes up feeling something new all the time, and she hasn’t yet landed on acceptance, not really. She knows logically what has happened. She’s not denying that he’s gone, not as she had when it had first happened, but her brain still hasn’t caught up with the reality yet. There’s still a part of her that thinks he’s there. She feels him like a phantom limb. At times, she feels him so strongly that the word dead feels far too strong. It’s hard to believe that something so tragic has happened to someone so close to her. She’s gotten used to witnesses other people’s tragedies, but that hasn’t prepared her to accept her own.

The grief comes back without warning. Even a month later, she thinks about all the things she’d like to tell Tim, forgetting for a while that she won’t be able to tell him them when she goes to work. Sometimes, it’s a light tickle while other times it’s like a hammer in her skull. One day, she had seen a stray cat crawling into the plant she had on her porch, and she’d snapped a picture, automatically thinking about how cute Tim would find it, and as the cat scurried away, the realization that Tim wouldn’t be there to see it during their next shift, hammered her, sending the air out of lungs. She still expected him to be there, and the fact that he isn’t doesn’t change her automatic thoughts of him. She’s gotten into the habit of knowing he’ll be there, and it takes time to get out of habits. She’s read that it takes twenty-one days to break a habit, but she’s starting to realize that it can take much longer.

Grief hides in the corners. Nancy sees Tim in places she never expected to see him— old movies, the smiles of strangers joking on the street, chocolate truffles that Tim loved to inhale. She still has his number in her phone. She’s kept the last thread they had. She looks at it periodically, and some days, it makes her cry. Other days, it makes her laugh. Some days, she can’t tell if she’s laughing or crying.

Nancy knows that she will always miss Tim. His mark in her life isn’t going to go away, and she wouldn’t change how he’s transformed her life. She wouldn’t take back any of the time spent with him, and for the most part, she doesn’t have regrets. She’s stopped agonizing over what she could have done better because those kinds of thoughts aren’t going to help anyone. They certainly aren’t going to bring Tim back. The most they can give her is an insight into how to do better in the future. She’s mostly learned that the best medicine for her grief is to be more compassionate and to put the love and brightness that Tim gave her back into the world because there’s something so healing about finding little ways to share someone who is physically gone.

No matter how old she gets, she’ll keep the memory of him bright in her heart. She’ll talk to her kids about him, and she won’t forget the role that he had in her life and the role he will continue to have. She might not think about him every day. There might be a time when his memory waxes and wanes in her consciousness, but he’ll always be there on some level. When she’s on a call, tending to a moron, she’ll think of him. When she cracks a joke like the ones he used to tell, she’ll think of him. She won’t censor his memory. She’ll remember the way he got frustrated with change and the times they disagreed about how to proceed. Nancy will take the time to preserve as much of him as possible in her mind.

The grief will linger, but she’ll learn to live with it, as every other person must do when they lose someone who meant something to them. She’s already started to learn. She knows how to keep afloat, even as the negative feelings pull her down. Nancy knows that she’s a work in progress. The hurt is still so sharp sometimes. She gets frustrated and tells herself just to get over it, but she’s trying to be more merciful with herself. She’s always been a forgiving person. Her compassion allows her to accept apologies and understand why other people hurt her, but that compassion hasn’t been something that she’s applied to herself lately. For a while, she didn’t think she deserved it, but now, she’s committed to bringing the spark back into her life. She’s been hiding from the light far too long.

Grief is the deepest yearning, a pit of desire deep in your soul. It is wanting what has been taken, and it looking for a way forward when the world has become dim, so grief is not the night; it is the stars. It is the light you carry that was given to you by the people who have most touched your soul. Grief hurts, but it is not the darkness. It is a lantern that reminds you of the brightness you saw in the eyes of another person. It is the luster of memory and joy. It is the sun shining like an alarm in the morning when you have gotten too little sleep, a starling chance at a new day. The grief stings your eyes, but you adjust to it. You learn to see in new ways. Grief is letting yourself remember all the times that another person has pulled you from the darkness. It is the glow of the past pointing you to the future because grief isn’t a trap. It is a beacon when the trauma urges you to remain in the dark.

As you heal, the piercing pain of the light starts to fade, drowned out with light pollution. The streetlamps are so bright that you cannot see the stars of the people who were once so close but are now so far away. The light, the great lantern of grief, never vanishes. When it’s run its initial course, grief doesn’t just pack up and leave. It continues to burn. The light is hot inside of you, but you learn to temper it. Some nights, it still shines so brightly that your eyes burn and tear, but the light does not defeat you, and you cannot defeat it without defeating yourself, so you must learn to balance the light. You must point it in the right direction, and you must allow it to be part of yourself.

It’s late. The night is firmly upon Austin, but the stars freckle the sky, and they make Nancy feel less alone. Her heart feels less cold as she reconnects with the brightness of the world. She likes to think that Tim is out there somewhere. She’s not religious, but she likes to believe there’s something bigger out there— bigger than her, bigger than her grief, bigger than the grief of the whole world. They don’t seem it, but the stars are brighter than a flashlight, a lamp, or even a giant spotlight. They’re far away, but that doesn’t take away their brightness. Even as your memory changes and you grow old and forget, all the lanterns of grief are still part of you, your emotional DNA, that make you who you are, even if you cannot consciously access those parts of yourself. The pinpricks of light in the sky remind Nancy that grieving means looking at the light. It is learning how to hold something you cannot touch. It is a reminder that you can only lose what you expected from the future, but you cannot lose the past and all that past meant to you.


End file.
